Judgescam

From the Gazette, via Norman Spector:

Judge used fake address Claudette Tessier-Couture, the twice-defeated federal Liberal candidate who co-chaired the party's electoral commission for Quebec with Alfonso Gagliano and was named a Superior Court judge, gave a fictitious address to Quebec's report on political-party financing. Under Quebec law, the names of all contributors to political parties giving more than $200 must be eligible Quebec voters. They must also give the money from their own pockets and must give their home address. In the year ended Dec. 31, 2003, Tessier-Couture gave $650 to the Quebec Liberals and gave her address as 140 Grande Allee Est, app. 800, Sillery QC G1S 4X1. There is no such address in Sillery, a former Quebec City suburb. In 2002, she gave $250 to the Quebec Liberals, listing her address as 140 Grande Allee Est, No. 800 Quebec QC G1R 5M8, the address of Fasken Martineau, the law firm where she worked before she was named a judge on July 24, 2003.

MORE: Angry in the Great White North has the compleat Judge Tessier-Couture. For those just joining us, her name first came up in Benoit Corbeil's interview with La Presse, where he insisted that both she and Gagliano knew of illegal payments to party workers. (Judge Tessier-Couture denies any such knowledge, as does Gagliano.) The Bloc has called for the usual RCMP investigation/judicial inquiry. ADDENDUM: Meanwhile, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, the formerly respected former law professor, finds himself under attack for his eye-stretching assertion that politics plays no role in federal judicial appointments from ... other law professors. The Citizen reports:

An expert on judicial appointments said political patronage remains a serious problem at the federal level because, unlike the scheme for provincial court judges in Ontario where the government picks from a short list chosen by an independent non-partisan committee, the federal scheme still leaves too much discretion to the government. "We have had patronage in judicial appointments at all levels, right from the earliest days of Confederation, and from my contacts in Quebec I was told ... patronage was alive and well in Quebec, and I believe it," said Jacob Ziegel, a law professor at the University of Toronto. Mr. Ziegel co-authored with Peter Russell a study of judicial appointments during the Brian Mulroney era which revealed that at least one quarter of those appointed were linked to the Conservatives. "I don't think it makes much difference whether you are talking about the Tories or the Liberals when it comes to patronage," said Mr. Ziegel, who, along with the Canadian Bar Association and other legal organizations, have long called for reforms. Under the present system, which has been virtually untouched since being devised during the Mulroney years, lawyers' applications for federal judgeships are vetted by low-profile seven-member judicial-appointments advisory committees across the country that do their work in secret. The committees have no power to choose the best names, or to prepare a ranked short list of recommended candidates. In large provinces like Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario, the committees supply a long list of names to the justice minister. "It leaves the incumbent regime with lots of discretion to continue to appoint their preferred candidates and to reward their friends," explains Mr. Ziegel. "It's only a screening system. It merely ensures that the clearly unsuitable people are excluded, but it doesn't ensure that the best qualified people are appointed." Over the years, the non-partisan advisory committees have complained that they are merely doing the government's "dirty work" by eliminating the worst candidates, but without any real power to ensure that the best candidates are appointed.

His co-author, Peter Russell, makes the same point in a letter to the Globe and Mail. See Spector. ON THE OTHER HAND:

Eugene Meehan, a former president of the Canadian Bar Association, says the appointment system has many checks and balances. "It just couldn't work," he says of the kind of scam described by Corbeil. "The process for judicial appointments is public, it's published and well known." It includes an arm's-length Canadian Bar Association evaluation committee that reviews every application and cross-checks references, Meehan said.